All eyes are on Jill Biden after Trump debate failure

After the November 2022 legislative elections, in which the Democratic Party obtained a better than expected result, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, appeared at a press conference at the White House. When they asked him if he would run for re-election, he pointed to his wife, sitting just a few steps away, and answered in plural: “Our intention is to run again.” The first lady, 73, is not only the president’s main personal supporter, but she has become his closest political advisor. She has taken on a growing role in the campaign, making notable appearances at rallies. After the disastrous intervention of Biden, 81, in the debate against Donald Trump last week in Atlanta, many see her as the only person capable of convincing the president to withdraw from it. She doesn’t seem up to the task.

Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s wife, did not attend the CNN debate. Jill Biden was there. When it was over, she held her unsure and defeated husband’s hand to help him down the single step of the debate stage, in some images that went viral. That physical support quickly turned into moral support. Both went to greet each other at a Democratic party, designed to celebrate what was supposed to have been Biden’s success in showing the world – but, above all, the voters – that he is in perfect condition to renew his mandate for four years at the head of the world’s leading power. It was not to be.

At the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Atlanta, attendees tried to ignore what they had just seen. Jill Biden took the microphone with her husband at her side. “Hasn’t the president done a great job? Yes,” he told the followers, who began chanting: “Four more years!” “Joe, you’ve done a great job,” he continued. “You have answered all the questions, you knew all the facts. And let me ask the crowd: What did Trump do?” “Lie!” He answered along with the attendees.

The next day, Jill Biden performed as an opening act at the president’s rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. She appeared in a dark dress with the word “vote” written in white dozens of times, a clear statement of intent. “Some of you may have heard that I didn’t agree to marry Joe until the fifth time he asked me, but the truth is that I loved him from the beginning. I saw in him then the same character that I see in him today. And although he has faced unimaginable tragedies, his optimism is unwavering; his strength, unwavering, his hope, undaunted,” she began.

“Over the last few years, Joe has helped heal our country, helping us all recover from the chaos of the last Administration. We don’t choose our chapter in history, but we can choose who leads us through it. Right now, with these dangers facing the world, there’s no one I would rather have sitting in the Oval Office right now than my husband,” she continued. The first lady then referred to the face-to-face. “What you saw yesterday in the debate is Joe Biden, a president with his integrity and character, who told the truth, while Trump told lie after lie after lie.”

Then, at a fundraising event in New York, he returned to what happened on Thursday: “Let’s talk about last night’s debate, because I know it’s in your head. As Joe said earlier today, he is not a young man. And after the debate last night, he said to me, ‘You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that good.’ I said, ‘Look, Joe, we’re not going to let 90 minutes define the four years you’ve been president.’

That has been Jill Biden’s consistent position. This Saturday, the president and the first lady participated in another fundraising event at the luxurious mansion of businessman Barry Rosenstein, in East Hampton (New York). Among the hosts were Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick and Michael J. Fox. Jill Biden insisted on her message: “Joe is not only the right person for the job. He is the only person for the position.”

The president’s family used a Sunday meeting at Camp David to urge him to stay in the race and fight on despite the debate. Some family members criticized the way Biden’s advisers prepared him for the face-off, according to four people familiar with the discussions cited by AP. Biden spent the day isolated with first lady Jill Biden, his children and grandchildren at the presidential retreat in Maryland. It was a previously scheduled trip for a photo op with Annie Leibovitz for the upcoming Democratic National Convention.

a long marriage

Joe and Jill Biden have been married for 47 years. They met in March 1975 through the president’s younger brother, Frank, who had been a student at the University of Delaware. Jill was in the process of divorcing her first husband. Joe was already a senator and trying to recover from a family tragedy. His first wife, Neilia, was driving the Bidens’ white Chevy on Dec. 18, 1972, to pick up the Christmas tree when they were struck at an intersection by a trailer loaded with corn cobs. Neilia and her one-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed, while her other two sons, Beau and Hunter, were injured, with Hunter suffering a severe skull fracture.

When the senator called Jill, the first thing she asked was: “Who gave you my phone number?” It was Saturday and she suggested he get out of it. She said she already had a date and Biden asked her to break it. She asked for a couple of hours. “She broke the date and then she broke my heart,” the president said last Valentine’s Day. on a TikTok account about couples’ first dates. They dated for two years, during which Biden asked her to marry him five times. The final one was an ultimatum. She accepted. What made her doubtful, she explained, was that after the family tragedy, she had to be sure that it was going to work, that if they got married it was for good, because Hunter and Beau had already suffered enough. Joe and Jill have another daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.

Jill Biden kept a very low profile for most of her husband’s long political career. They lived in Wilmington, from where Biden could travel to Congress daily by train to fulfill her obligations as a senator. The first lady continued to work as an English teacher when her husband became Barack Obama’s vice president in 2008 and, despite her 73 years, she has continued working after assuming the role of first lady. She teaches at a community college in Virginia, outside Washington.

She was already actively involved in the 2020 presidential campaign. Now, she has thrown herself into the re-election campaign. Beyond education and women’s rights, her key role is to accompany the president, transmit energy at his campaign events and advise him in private. She sees Trump as a threat to the United States. When Frank Biden spoke to his brother Joe about Jill, to arrange their blind date, he told him: “You’re going to love her: she’s beautiful and she doesn’t like politics.” Perhaps that was true then.

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